Why America Built a Bigger Army
The United States' first great military expansion began with a war for Indigenous land
More than two centuries ago, on a battlefield in what is now Indiana, hundreds of American soldiers were lured to their deaths with trinkets. On a dark, warm autumn night in 1790, General Josiah Harmar marched his troops toward Kiihkayonki, the capital of the Myaamia nation. At the time, the US Army was so small that most of the fighting force was from state militias. The militiamen joined about 300 US Army soldiers on their mission to Kiihkayonki — their goal was to build a fort there.
When American forces arrived, the village was deserted. Rather than risk civilian lives, most Myaamia people had evacuated. Quickly, the Americans turned to destruction. They burned homes, crops, and food stores — including more than 20,000 bushels of corn. Believing they had won, the Americans relaxed and started looting valuables left behind. But the Myaamia warriors were watching from a distance — and they had formed a plan.
For years, US encroachment had been pressing on the edges of Myaamia homelands. With more than half a dozen tribes in the Great Lakes region, the Myaamia formed a military alliance called the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance. Tribes in that region had long seen each other like an extended family, and so when one family member was threatened they all showed up to help. The Alliance was led by a Myaamia man quickly rising in prominence. In English, he was called Little Turtle. For bravery in battle during the American Revolution, Little Turtle was elevated to the position of a war chief. During the wars that followed the birth of the United States, he would prove to be one of the Myaamia’s most important leaders.
The Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance threatened American plans for expansion. After the Revolution, the young government needed money and Myaamia homelands were some of the most fertile and valuable on the frontier. Those lands were part of what was then known as the Northwest Territory, a vast expanse bounded by the Mississippi River, the Ohio River, and the Great Lakes. That land would eventually become the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. To break apart the alliance and Myaamia resistance, the Americans decided to build a fort in Kiihkayonki. Their plan, however, would prove hard to implement.
Back in Kiihkayonki, Little Turtle and other Myaamia warriors watched the American soldiers looting. They saw how easily they were distracted by silver and other fine things. And the Myaamia decided to use their greed against them.
When US soldiers moved a little further north, Myaamia warriors scattered trinkets and other valuables on the ground. When the soldiers stopped to pick them up, Myaamia warriors attacked. Nearly 200 Americans were killed. The rest ran away. The Myaamia remember this as the Battle of Kiihkayonki. But history books call it Harmar’s defeat, because instead of building a fort at Kiihkayonki, General Harmar retreated.
Harmar’s campaign wouldn’t be the last. Instead, the US army and local militias would suffer a series of defeats at the hands of the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance. Those early battles would spur the first major military build-up in the United States and forever change US attitudes towards its own military and the very idea of establishing a centralized standing army. Today, the US military is among the largest in the world, with infrastructure and spending that far outpace any other country — and the reason can be traced back to those early conflicts in the Northwest Territory.
Wary founders
There’s this famous painting about the end of the Revolutionary War. Today, it hangs in the Rotunda of the US Capitol. In the painting, George Washington is standing in the middle of an official-looking room. A sword swings from his hip. Members of Congress are seated and watching him. In an outstretched hand, Washington is holding a piece of paper — it’s his resignation letter.
Normally someone quitting their job isn’t the type of thing memorialized in a painting, but this was an important moment. At the end of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army disbanded. The soldiers that had fought and won the war went home — including Washington.
Our founding fathers didn’t want a big, centralized military. George Washington argued that keeping a large army standing around was “dangerous to the liberties of a Country.” You have to remember, British soldiers occupied colonial towns. When the population of Boston was about 15,000 people, King George III sent 2,000 troops. They shot and killed people in the streets. Our founders thought a big military could lead to tyranny, so the army they did keep around was small. At one point, the United States had only 80 enlisted men.
That founding vision feels like a far cry from the military we have today. The US spends more money on its military than any other country — it’s not even close. We have the most military bases, the highest tonnage of naval ships, and the largest air force. How did we go from founders who didn’t want a big military to having the most expensive, most powerful one in the world?
While our founding fathers didn’t want a large military, they had another problem. They wanted to control the land that is now Ohio. And the tribes that lived there were pushing back. Harmar’s defeat was just the beginning: after the battle, Little Turtle and the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance continued to block the US military from occupying their homelands and from building a fort in Kiihkayonki.
Returning to Kiihkayonki
About a year after Harmar’s defeat, the United States sent a second general to attack Kiihkayonki — General Arthur St. Clair. For the campaign, Congress created a brand new regiment and gave St. Clair about twice as many regular soldiers. Because the army was still quite small, the fighting force was once again supplemented with men from state militias. This time, roughly 2,000 men marched to Kiihkayonki.
The campaign quickly unraveled. Desertion was rampant. Progress was slow. St. Clair got lost and didn’t know where he was. But the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance knew, and they were ready. Little Turtle gathered over 1,000 Indigenous warriors and led them South to meet the American army. The force was led by the Myaamia but included Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatamie, Lenape, Shawnee, Wyandotte, Haudenosaunee, and Cherokee fighters, all working together.
One night, St. Clair’s force camped near the Wabash River. By dawn, Little Turtle and his forces had surrounded them. What followed was one of the worst military disasters in US history.
The Indigenous fighters used the terrain to their advantage and attacked from higher ground. The Americans tried to fire back, but many of their bullets only hit the trees — later generations in the small Ohio town found lead in the wood when they chopped down trees.
The Alliance strategically killed the American commanding officers, and from there chaos ensued. Over 80% of the US soldiers were killed or wounded that day during what’s now known as St. Clair’s defeat. It is still one of the highest casualty rates the US has experienced during war — ever.
The army of an empire
After St. Clair’s defeat, there was a lot of finger pointing. The militia blamed the US Army. The US Army blamed the Kentucky militia. Congress wanted to investigate what happened but had never done that before. Leaders were unsure of what authority they even had. After some debate, the House created an oversight committee, and it conducted the first ever congressional investigation.
During the political turmoil, Washington convened all his department heads to address the crisis. The group that came together would later be called the presidential Cabinet.
After two defeats at the hands of the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance, George Washington changed his mind about what kind of military the US should have: the man who had resigned his commission at the end of the Revolutionary War and had watched the Continental Army dissolve now argued that the United States needed a larger, professional military. And Congress agreed. Our founders decided they needed an army not so different from the one England had. They needed the army of an empire.
This war also marked another important precedent. Congress funded the Northwest Indian War but never formally declared it. It was the first undeclared war the US ever fought.
The government spent the next year rebuilding. Congress created a new, centralized military — the Legion of the United States. It would rely on trained soldiers rather than militia. Congress expanded the military from fewer than 100 enlisted men after the Revolution to more than 5,000 by 1792. New supplies were purchased. War games were held. And to finish the job of building a fort in Kiihkayonki, they recruited another general — a man named Anthony Wayne.
Americans called him “Mad Anthony” Wayne because of his daring exploits during the Revolutionary War. But in this campaign, Wayne proved remarkably patient. Instead of leading a charge straight to Kiihkayonki, he spent years building a series of forts, slowly advancing into Myaamia homelands.
One of those forts was built at the site of St. Clair’s defeat. The ground was still littered with the bones of the soldiers who died there. Symbolically, the army named it Fort Recovery. In the system of US forts, Fort Recovery wasn’t that big — it was just a supply fort. When the US was invading Indigenous territory, it would build these forts 20 miles apart because that’s about how far a pack horse could travel in a day.
The Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance attacked the fort but couldn’t take it. The battle was not a decisive American victory — more American soldiers died than Indigenous ones — but it weakened the alliance. Seventeen soldiers from the alliance died, and for Indigenous leaders, those deaths were too many. “Because of the harm done to the community,” says George Ironstrack, historian and citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, “that loss of life is too high a price to pay.”
Some Indigenous leaders started reassessing the situation. One of those leaders was Little Turtle. After the devastating losses at St.Clair’s defeat, he thought the Americans wouldn’t come back, but then they did. Ironstrack sums up his thinking: “How can we beat them? Who can endure this level of loss and come again?” The answer was that the United States — and the colonial system that birthed it — could.
A time for peace
At a meeting of the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance, Little Turtle argued that it was time to pursue peace. He gave a speech urging negotiations with the United States, but his words were met with silence. The alliance continued to fight but shrank in size. And they lost their final, short battle against the Americans.
By that time, the Myaamia had been at war for roughly 15 years. During American military invasions, Myaamia villages and food stores were repeatedly burned. Little Turtle’s people were starving. At the peace negotiations that followed, Little Turtle emerged not only as a military leader but also as a skilled diplomat. General Wayne attempted to dominate the talks, but Little Turtle proved to be an effective and persuasive negotiator. Speaking to American negotiators, according to one record, he said the Myaamia homelands were “where the Great Spirit placed my forefather a long time ago, and charged him not to sell or part with his lands, but to preserve them for his posterity. This charge has been handed down to me.”
The resulting Treaty of Greeneville was not a total surrender. In the treaty, the Myaamia kept most of their heartland; most Myaamia villages were able to rebuild and stay put. They ceded a large area of hunting grounds in Ohio.
But the Americans did build a fort in Kiihkayonki. They named it after General Anthony Wayne. And that is how Fort Wayne, IN, got its name.
There are other wars and moments in US history that made our military bigger — World War II and the Civil War among them. But one of the first and most consequential transformations happened during the war against the Taawaawa Siipiiwi Alliance. And our country didn’t build up our military to defend freedom or liberty. We built it so the US could expand.
The war for Kiihkayonki did not simply determine who would control a single place in what is now Indiana. It changed the structure of the United States itself.
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